Maduro & Flores: Funding Fight Shapes Defense

Former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife Silia Flores appeared in a New York

federal courtroom on Thursday.

They're charged with drug trafficking, along with related kidnappings and murders, facing

possible life sentences if convicted.

The main fight centered on whether they can use Venezuelan government funds to pay their

lawyers which U.S. sanctions currently block.

Prosecutors argued allowing the money would undermine the sanctions meant to stop Maduro

from looting his country's wealth.

His defense team called it a violation of constitutional rights, especially now that

U.S. venezuelatized have warmed with eased oil sanctions and new diplomatic contacts.

Judge Alvin Hellerstein seemed skeptical of the block, stressing their right to a strong

defense, but he held off on a ruling with no timeline given.

Outside the courthouse, supporters and critics clashed in noisy rallies, chanting, waving

signs like free Maduro or rotten prison and banging drums.

Meanwhile in Caracas, a few hundred ruling party-backers gathered in a plaza to pray

for the couple and to cry their January 3rd capture as AC, sovereignty violation.

The pair, now 63 and 69, sat in jail uniforms during the hearing, their first since pleading

not guilty in January.

They've skipped bail requests and remain in a Brooklyn detention center.

The indictment details ties to cartels shipping tons of cocaine to the U.S., plus ordering

violence against debtors and rivals.

With no next hearing or trial date set, the funding dispute could shape how their defense

unfolds, as Venezuela's government under new leadership, distances itself from Maduro's

era.

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